Two Masters

This novella, written in 1923 and first published in 1924, is set among the Australian forces in Egypt and France during the First World War. The narrator, Carter, first encounters the central character, Sergeant Ralston, at Tel-el-Kebir in Egypt at the beginning of 1916 soon after the withdrawal from Gallipoli. Carter’s first impressions of Ralston are of “an unsoldierly appearance”:
“His face was small and the features sensitive and delicate... His whole expression suggested something fragile and feminine that sorted ill with adventure and the alarms of war.”
He sees him as a man of cultural refinement rather than of military bravado. In France, however, Carter for the first time observed Ralston in combat:
“I was prepared to excuse him, in circumstances which must in their nature unman him. I say I was amazed at his conduct. His courage was of a character which marked it as unique. Everywhere he was serene and imperturbable and in an extremity he was the rallying-point for us all.”

Arthur Wheen (born 9 February 1897) enlisted in the Australian Army in October 1915 and embarked for Egypt in December. Like Carter, the narrator, Wheen arrived at Tel-el-Kebir in early 1916 and in June left Egypt for France. There he served as a signaller with the 54th Battalion of the Australian Imperial Force and was three times recommended for the Military Medal. He was severely wounded in the shoulder at Péronne on 6 September 1918 and was invalided to England. On returning to Australia, he went to the University of Sydney and in 1920 was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. This was to lead him into writing and translating. In 1929 he undertook what is still regarded as the standard English translation of Erich Maria Remarque’s Im Westen nichts Neues, to which he gave the famous title, All Quiet on the Western Front. 

In March 1918, Carter left France to attend officers’ training in England but remained in touch with Ralston by occasional letters. The majority of the final chapter of the novella is made up of a long letter of August 1918 from Ralston to Carter in which he describes his experience as a spy among the German artillery troops. Here Ralston explores the idea summarised in the title of the book:
“I passed through the lines; and because of the unsuspicious kindliness of heart of one man I was accepted and carried through my task with ease and profit to my country. Again I was serving two masters. As a German artillery office I was ranging guns on my own countrymen and as a British spy I was betraying the Germans who had accepted me.” Later, Ralston’s dilemma is far more serious. One of his friends among the Germans discovers that he is a spy but does not betray him. Ralston tries to reason with the situation he is in:
“My duty to my country, which, so far, I had placed above all else, required me to carry through my task of espionage. To secure myself in that, there must be no evidence against me. I saw that my country would require that I should kill my friend. But may one's country ask this of its citizens? 
...no Christian could live entirely for the state and still preserve his faith... Unhappy man to live in such a world!”